ClearType Tuner PowerToy

Making text more visible onto any computer can be easily done by accessing the dedicated section in the Control Panel, at least on the more recent iterations of Windows. The alternative is an application also developed by Microsoft, which goes by the name of ClearType Tuner PowerToy.

This ClearType technology greatly improved font rendering and through a simple wizard, you can further adjust its settings to make the text appear just as you want them. As a side note, this method of increasing the clarity of the on-screen characters works best if the monitor is set to its native resolution.

ClearType Tuner PowerToy allows you to configure some advanced parameters, so you can choose the LCD Screen Stripping setting, use a different sample font and even adjust manually the contrast for ClearType using a simple slider. The contrast values range from 1 to 2.2, or in other words, from darker to lighter.

A neat feature of this particular application is its ability to use the modifications you made as defaults for all users that will be created onto the system. Also, the settings fixed through ClearType Tuner PowerToy will come into effect before other user preferences are loaded.

Insofar as the tuning wizard is concerned, it enables you to select the text sample that looks best to you and proceed to the next step. Finally, just before finishing the guided configuration, you will be presented with a more complex illustration of how different fonts indifferent styles (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) will look like onto your system.

To sum things up, ClearType Tuner PowerToy is certainly a useful tool, even fun to work with and , more importantly, it is very easy to use, so everyone can try it and be satisfied with the results.